Tuesday, May 29, 2012

The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nicole Bernier
(Crown, June 2012)

When Kate’s friend Elizabeth dies in a plane crash, Kate
finds herself the keeper of Elizabeth’s
journals and must decide what to do with them and the secrets they
contain. As Kate reads the journals
while on her family beach vacation, she reminisces about the Elizabeth
she knew and the times they spent together, but learns more about Elizabeth through the
journals than readers learn about Kate who is still alive. Elizabeth’s
plane crash occurred just before September eleventh, and Kate is reading the
journals the following summer as she wrestle with the decision to return to her
career as a pastry chef or continue being a full time mother. Through Elizabeth’s journals, Kate learns of
Elizabeth’s difficult teenage years, the time as a young wife and mother when
she was robbed because of an incautious act, and that the secret trips that
Elizabeth’s husband assumed where to meet a lover were something entirely
different, something that her friends and family may feel cheated for not
knowing about when she was alive. While
Bernier explores the secrets we keep and the persona we put on for others,
sometimes, even for those closest to us, this is a very introspective novel and
there is not as much character development as might be expected from a story
such as this.

The Queen: A Life in Brief by Robert Lacey (Harper
Perennial, May 2012)

Distilled from royal biographer Robert Lacey’s longer works
on Queen Elizabeth II, this short (six chapters) book, full of photographs of
the only monarch of England
most people have known in their lifetime, offers an overview of the woman who
was born not to rule England,
but who has become probably the most recognized world leader of the twentieth
century. Born the first daughter to the
second son of King George V, Lilibet had no reason to ever think she would be
crowned queen, but after the death of her grandfather, abdication of her uncle
and the coronation of her father, George VI, an eleven year old Elizabeth
realized that she would be the next monarch to rule Great Britain, a task that
came sooner than she expected when her father died in February 1952, just five
years after Elizabeth’s marriage to Philip Mountbatten. Throughout the following fifty years the
world has watched as Elizabeth gave birth to four children, including the next
king of England, Charles, raised her family, watched as they married, had
families of their own, divorced and remarried, and suffered great losses,
changing the face of the traditional monarchy.
From the photos in the book, it is evident that while Queen Elizabeth
has a great love for her nation, she also has a fierce love for her family: a
grinning son (Andrew) greets his mother upon his return from the Falklands War
and a grieving daughter keeps both eyes on her mother’s casket as it is borne
out of Westminster Abby with all the pomp and circumstances befitting the Queen
Mother.

The Boy Who Stole the Leopard’s Spots by Tamar Myers
(William Morrow, May 2012)

Tamar Myers grew up in the Belgian Congo and adds a great
authenticity to the setting of this third mystery set in Belle Vue. Set in 1958 with flashbacks to 1935 when the
birth of twins born to a chief set in motion a chain of events that will have
far reaching effects, including a murder, when the two are reunited in Belle
Vue. At the center of the investigation
is police chief Pierre Jardin and Protestant missionary Amanda Brown, who share
a mutual attraction, much to the dismay of the locals. Myers deftly depicts the tension between the
Roman Catholics and the Protestants, the Belgians and the Congolese, in a
nation so torn it will be almost impossible to become whole without much strife
and death. The ritualistic cannibalism
and other superstitious activity collide with Amanda’s mission, and that of
Monsignor Clemente who carries his own secrets, dating back to the 1930’s. Myers is known for her Pennsylvania Dutch Inn
mysteries featuring the farcical Magdalena Yoder and are filled with silly,
often outrageous situations, a tone that sometimes creeps into this series and
doesn’t match the tenor of the time. The
authenticity of colonial Africa life and politics is very interesting and could
not be done as well by someone who had not lived it.

When Ken Budd was thirty-nine, his father collapsed and died
after playing eighteen holes of golf, one year into his retirement. As Ken and his father’s friends and family
grieved, Ken began to assess his own life, especially with regard to the affect
his father had on others. Ken became
very conscious of the fact that he and his wife, his childhood sweetheart
Julie, did not have children and would mostly likely not have children. An unsolicited e-mail from a Katrina Relief
organization sets Ken on the road of becoming a semi-pro volunteer. Over the next few years, he rebuilds a home
in flood damaged New Orleans, teaches English (with his wife) in Costa Rica,
works with special needs children in China, studies climate change in Ecuador,
works with orphans in Kenya and at a refugee camp in Palestine. As Ken, and
sometimes Julie, experiences life in other countries, meets people like himself,
searching for something in their life, and helps others, especially children,
he comes to accept his life as it is and learns he is capable of having an
impact on others, even without children of his own. Ken’s story is broken down into each of his
volunteer tours of duty and is told with honest emotions as he reflects on each
experience and what he learns from each.
Ken keeps his sense of humor in many situations where others would throw
in the towel and continues to help and inspire as he looks for his own way.

Retired NYPD Detective Dave Gurney isn’t all that retired as
he returns for his third case. Gurney
and his wife have move to upstate New York where the media dubbed Supercop can
rest and the couple can try and live a normal life. So far, that hasn’t happened as Dave has
become a consultant on two cases, the last one that ended with Dave being shot
and the resulting depression and over dependency on pain medications. When a reporter calls and asks Dave to assist
her daughter who is working on her graduate thesis, a television series based
on the emotional trauma family members of the victims of a serial killer known
as the Good Shepherd suffer every day; the Good Shepherd, who targeted people
driving luxury black Mercedes sedans in Upstate New York was never caught, and
Dave realizes that he has only been dormant all these years and will not be
finished until he is caught. Though it
seems unlikely that a cop with Dave’s instincts and brooding temperament would
get as involved with a reporter, especially when he learns that the television
show is going to be more sensational than originally pitched, the plot is good
and Dave’s different way of looking at the evidence helps point investigators
in the right direction, though not soon enough to prevent more deaths. Verdon’s plots are tightly constructed, his
characters well developed, and though nothing may compare to his first novel Think of a Number, this is definitely
one of the better detective series out there today.

Saturday, May 26, 2012

After his
parents are arrested and imprisoned for robbing a bank, fifteen-year-old Dell
Parsons is taken in by Arthur Remlinger who, unbeknownst to Dell, is hiding a
dark and violent nature that interferes with Dell's quest to find grace and
peace on the prairie of Saskatchewan.

LowerRiver by Paul Theroux
(Houghton Mifflin)

Idealizing
the four years he spent in Malawi
with the Peace Corps, Ellis Hock is abruptly divorced by his wife and decides
to return to Africa only to find the region
devastatingly transformed by poverty and apathy.

Beautiful Sacrifice by Elizabeth Lowell (William Morrow)

Archeologist
Lina Taylor teams up with former Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent
Hunter Johnson to track down four ancient Mayan artifacts that have
disappeared.

Wife-22 by Melanie Gideon (Ballantine)

Baring her
soul in an anonymous survey for a marital happiness study, Alice catalogues her stale marriage,
unsatisfying job and unfavorable prospects and begins to question virtually
every aspect of her life.

The Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson (Bloomsbury)

In 1923, Eva English and her devout sister Lizzie embark on a journey to be missionaries in the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar, while in modern-day London, a young woman's act of kindness to a Yemeni refugee results in an unexpected journey.

On the
ocean liner Mauretania , two European
scientists with a dramatic new invention are barely rescued from abduction by
the Van Dorn Detective Agency's intrepid chief investigator, Isaac Bell.
Unfortunately, they are not so lucky the second time. The thugs attack
again-and this time one of the scientists dies. What are they holding that is
so precious? Only something that will revolutionize business and popular
culture-and perhaps something more. For war clouds are looming, and a ruthless
espionage agent has spotted a priceless opportunity to give the Germans an
edge. It is up to Isaac Bell to figure out who he is, what he is up to, and
stop him. But he may already be too late . . . and the future of the world may
just hang in the balance.

Blaze of Glory by Jeff Shaara (Ballantine)

A
fictional account of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, told from
the perspectives of participants on both sides, recreates the April 1862
surprise attack by Confederate forces on the Union Army at Shiloh.

Saturday, May 12, 2012

When the brutal killing of a family in a small Minnesota town reveals
unsettling similarities to drug-retribution crimes, baffled police officer
Lucas Davenport is shocked by findings that lead him into the darkest case of
his career.

The Columbus
Affair by Steve Berry (Ballantine)

When his beloved daughter falls in the clutches of a
ruthless zealot, disgraced journalist Tom Sagan risks everything to embark on a
perilous quest from Florida through Prague to Jamaica
in search of an invaluable historical treasure.

The Cottage at GlassBeach by Heather Barbieri
(Harper Collins)

Humiliated by her husband's infidelity, forty-year-old Nora
Keane, married to the youngest attorney general in Massachusetts,
takes refuge with her maternal aunt on Burke's Island off the coast of Maine.

Friday, May 11, 2012

A Lady’s Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar by Suzanne Joinson (Bloomsbury, May 2012)

In 1923 sisters Eva and Lizzie are
traveling to Kashgar along the Silk Road as missionaries with the
strong-willed, outgoing Millicent Frost.
Lizzie is very intent about their mission, but Eva is mostly along to
write the bicycle travelogue for which she signed a contract before leaving
London. Along their route, the women
encounter a young woman giving birth; the woman dies and the group, who is now
caring for the newborn infant, is held under house arrest by local Muslim
officials, possibly for murder. In a
separate story set in modern day London, Frieda, a young woman whose parents
were free spirits, and who has not seen her mother in many years, inherits the
contents of Irene Gray’s house, a woman she never knew and of whom she never
heard anyone speak. Along with a Yemeni
alien whose welcome in London has been worn out, but who doesn’t know where to
turn, Frieda sorts through the contents of Irene’s house, including an owl, and
in the process learns more about herself and how she came to be who she is and
maybe a bit why her mother was the way she was.
When the two stories finally connect, it will most likely not be a
surprise, though there are several choices for how they will. Eva’s journey and Frieda’s both become as
much about self-discovery as anything else.
Both are strong willed women, though Frieda does seem as much so as Eva
because of the times. Many familiar
topics are covered, but framed in such a way as to make them interesting and
unique. Well researched with keen
insight this first novel is one not to miss.

When his wife Amy goes missing on
their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne begins to question how well he knew
his wife. The police suspect Nick in
Amy’s disappearance after his casual reaction to his wife’s disappearance and
the knowledge that Nick and Amy’s marriage was beginning to falter, and Nick
must now follow clues his wife left him to learn her secrets and to learn the
secrets Amy had uncovered about him. The
more Nick looks, the more he learns he never really knew Amy and the more he
realizes he will never be able to be free of her, no matter how this ends. Filled with cunning and clever tension,
Gillian Flynn describes the marriage of two people who only knew about the
other what the other was willing to reveal.
There are neat twists and turns, with a narrative that drives the plot
forward as what happened to Amy, and what Amy did, is
slowly revealed one layer at a time, making this book completely irresistable.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living
by Luc Ferry (Harper Perennial, 2012)

Luc Ferry is a French philosopher at the University of
Paris. In this easily accessible book he
takes on five major areas in the history of philosophy, the wisdom of the
ancient Greeks, the Christian thinkers, existentialists and modern and
post-modern philosophers, synthesizing it in a way that allows us to think about
modern daily life and how the wisdom of old can help us live a more enlightened
journey, and perhaps have a happier outlook on life. Ferry first tackles the question of “What is
Philosophy?” framing it not as the antithesis of religion, but perhaps as its
corollary. He then spends a chapter on
each of the five areas he has chosen to highlight, explaining how one leads
into the next and how they are interdependent, building upon each other, yet
can be seen as individual schools of thought.
Ferry’s love for his subject matter, and his reverence for it, show; he
includes socio-political climates surround each major school and guides the
reader to see how each philosophy might fit in to his or her life rather than
assuming every thought is for everyone at all times. While the chapters chronologically lay out
the history of thought, once the book has been read the first time, it is easy
to pick up and find the sections that appeal to us most at any given time. Ferry gives relevance to the great thinkers we
studied in school and makes us want to understand them and apply their thoughts
to our lives.

Owen Meany and John Wheelwright are, for the most part, two
ordinary eleven-year olds growing up in New England. Johnny is the illegitimate grandson of one of
the town’s founders and Owen, the son of a quarry worker, is a smaller than
normal child with a high voice, both causing his classmates to pick on
him. In baseball, Owen is the team’s
favorite pinch hitter (as he always walks) and pinch runner (as he easily
steals bases). The one ball Owen hits is
a foul ball that kills Johnny’s mother, something Johnny does not hold against
Owen. Instead, the two strike up an
unlikely friendship, almost a protector/protectorate relationship, though who
is protecting who is not always clear.
When Owen sees a tombstone with the precise date of his death on it
(during an ill-fated production of A
Christmas Carol) he turns this knowledge to his advantage and adopts an
almost ethereal quality about him, allowing himself to speak whatever in on his
mind without fear of retribution. As the
two enter young manhood and are faced with the Vietnam draft, Owen injures
Johnny to save him from his fate, but Owen charges into the army, certain that
his fate lies in Vietnam, only to meet it in Arizona trying to ease the pain of
the family of a fallen soldier.

From the first sentence of the novel, narrator Johnny
Wheelwright acknowledges that Owen Meany is the reason he is a Christian, in
whatever form he has chosen and allowed his faith to take. While there are
many, many detailed stories about Owen and Johnny’s friendship and their life
together, the theme remains the same:
Owen becomes the instrument that allows others to consider their faith
and to follow the path set out before them.
Stylistically, Owen’s dialogue, ALWAYS WRITTEN IN CAPITAL LETTERS, is
bothersome and unnecessary to get the points across. While Owen may appear too good to be true,
indeed too good to be of this world, there is something appealing in the time
honored tale of two best friends looking out for each other, no matter what may
come. Written in 1989, A Prayer for Owen Meany is Irving’s
seventh novel. His most recent In One Person was published by Simon & Schuster this
May.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

The sequel to Hilary Mantel's 2009 Man Booker Prize winner and New York Times bestseller, Wolf Hall delves into the heart of Tudor history with the downfall of Anne Boleyn Though he battled for seven years to marry her, Henry is disenchanted with Anne Boleyn. She has failed to give him a son and her sharp intelligence and audacious will alienate his old friends and the noble families of England. When the discarded Katherine dies in exile from the court, Anne stands starkly exposed, the focus of gossip and malice. At a word from Henry, Thomas Cromwell is ready to bring her down. Over three terrifying weeks, Anne is ensnared in a web of conspiracy, while the demure Jane Seymour stands waiting her turn for the poisoned wedding ring. But Anne and her powerful family will not yield without a ferocious struggle. Hilary Mantel's Bring Up the Bodies follows the dramatic trial of the queen and her suitors for adultery and treason. To defeat the Boleyns, Cromwell must ally with his natural enemies, the papist aristocracy. What price will he pay for Anne's head?

Home by Toni Morrison (Knopf)

Frank Money is an angry, self-loathing veteran of the Korean War who, after traumatic experiences on the front lines, finds himself back in racist America with more than just physical scars. His home may seem alien to him, but he is shocked out of his crippling apathy by the need to rescue his medically abused younger sister and take her back to the small Georgia town they come from and that he’s hated all his life. As Frank revisits his memories from childhood and the war that have left him questioning his sense of self, he discovers a profound courage he had thought he could never possess again.

In One Person by John Irving (Simon & Schuster)

A tale inspired by the U.S. AIDS epidemic in the 1980s follows the experiences of individuals--including the bisexual narrator--who are torn by devastating losses and whose perspectives on tolerance and love are shaped by awareness of what might have been.

11th Hour by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro (Little, Brown)

Investigating the murder of a millionaire who was killed with a weapon linked to the deaths of four San Francisco criminals, pregnant detective Lindsay Boxer is horrified to realize that the killer could be among her closest friends.

The Road to Grace by Richard Paul Evans (Simon & Schuster)

Reeling from the sudden loss of his wife, his home, and his business, Alan Christoffersen, a once-successful advertising executive, has left everything he knew behind and set off on an extraordinary cross-country journey. Carrying only a backpack, he is walking from Seattle to Key West, the farthest destination on his map. Now almost halfway through his trek, Alan sets out to walk the nearly 1,000 miles between South Dakota and St. Louis, but it's the people he meets along the way who give the journey its true meaning: a mysterious woman who follows Alan's walk for close to a hundred miles, the ghost hunter searching graveyards for his wife, and the elderly Polish man who gives Alan a ride and shares a story that Alan will never forget. Full of hard-won wisdom and truth, The Road to Grace is a compelling and inspiring novel about hope, healing, grace, and the meaning of life.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Jackie Kennedy Onassis may have been the most recognizable
women in the world beginning in the late 1950’s when her very attractive, young
husband was elected to be president of the United States. With the same passion she approached life and
impeccable taste, during her thousand days in the White House, she with a team
of designers restored America’s home, raised her two children and became the
symbol of a nation’s mourning as she walked behind her husband’s casket to
Arlington where he was buried after his assassination in Dallas. Five years later, Jackie surprised her family
and her nation when she married Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis, almost
twenty years her senior. She moved a
young Caroline and Patrick to the Greek Island where Ari lived until she
realized her children needed to be in the United States and moved her children
back to the Manhattan of her youth.
There Jackie reveled in the culture and architecture available,
essentially becoming estranged from Ari.
After reading that Grand Central Terminal was to be turned into a modern
office complex, she lent her support to the Municipal Art Society and became
the driving force to save the Beaux Arts building and restore it to its present
glory. In 1975, Jackie received word
that Ari was in grave health and flew to his side in Greece where she and his
daughter Christina moved Ari to Paris where he would spend the last months of
his life, thought Jackie would not be at his side when he died. Once more Jackie found herself a widow with
the world’s eyes on her, especially as Christina began planting stories that
Jackie and Ari were on their way to a divorce and that he had all but cut his
extravagant wife out of his will. Frustrated
and not sure which path her life should now take, Jackie took this time to
reexamine where she was in her life and where it should go from here. Jackie returned to her journalism roots,
writing some pieces for The New Yorker,
and landing a job at Viking, a publishing house where she was a consulting
editor, publishing a number of books before her death in 1994.

This well documented book focuses on Jackie’s reemergence as
a woman on her own in 1975, but examines the events in her life that led to
this pivotal moment. This small, concise
book is well documented with many endnotes citing primary sources and will peak
readers’ interest to delve into the many full length books in the bibliography. Tina Cassidy has focused on a small portion
of this American icon’s life, offering fresh insight and providing
inspiration.

Build a Better World

The 11th Annual Adult Summer Reading Club has come to a close.

The club's 157 members have read a total of 1,515 books!

Thank you, all, for your enthusiastic participation.

Quote to Inspire

"Fiction, imaginative work that is, is not dropped like a pebble upon the ground, as science may be; fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."~Virginia Woolf

11th Annual

To see a larger image of this graph, look through the member reviews. It will usually be posted on Friday afternoons.

How to Use this Blog:

To post a review for a book, please submit it via the "Finished a Book" link from the club's webpage: http://www.hclibrary.us/asrc.htm.

Because all posts & comments must be approved by the library, and because the librarians sometimes take summer vacations too, there will be a delay before you see your submission on the blog. Please be patient; your review will appear.